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| The American Red Cross Command Center in Connecticut is organizing mental health workers, such as Edward Kinghorn, to help in disaster relief. |
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With the recent hurricanes and other natural disasters, the American Red Cross is right at the scene of suffering, and with them is Edward Kinghorn, a psychology professor at BYU-Idaho and registered Red Cross volunteer.
For the past two weeks, from Sept. 17 to 28, Kinghorn has been at Camp Williams, a Utah National Guard Base, and has played the role of disaster mental health specialist for displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina, as well as a shift supervisor and shelter supervisor.
Kinghorn’s favorite part of volunteering for the Red Cross is that he doesn’t have to bill anybody.
“I just go out and do what I do for free,” Kinghorn said.
There is a lot entailed with being a disaster mental health specialist. Kinghorn said that most people don’t understand what his role is. It’s not to establish a therapeutic or counseling relationship with disaster victims or other volunteers.
Since there is limited time in a disaster situation, the major therapeutic goal is to provide mental health education and offer clients referral information to state and local health professionals.
Kinghorn is a licensed clinical neuro-psychologist in Utah and Idaho, and his specialty is epilepsy. He began volunteering for the Red Cross while doing research in stress. Dr. Ronald Jacques, also of the Psychology Department, had already been working with the Red Cross and suggested it to Kinghorn as something he might like.
“I started training; Sept. 11 happened; I got involved and I’ve been doing it ever since,” Kinghorn said.
During the aftermath of Sept. 11, Kinghorn made two trips to New York and spent a little over a month there. His first assignment dealt with people in New Jersey who had lost loved ones.
“That’s the most difficult part — dealing with people who are dealing with the death of a loved one,” Kinghorn said. “[It was] incredibly difficult after Sept. 11.”
After Sept. 11, he finished his training with Red Cross and his name went on a national register of volunteers. There are now three BYU-I psychology professors on the national register: Kinghorn, Dr. Jacques and Dr. Richard Cluff, a new staff member of the Psychology Department.
Kinghorn said he has learned many things while being a disaster volunteer, but the top three are that human beings are resilient, they are more alike than they are different, regardless of race, and they are noble.
